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Ask HN: How do you produce product/feature demo videos?

30 points by ScottyFillups ↗ HN
Sometimes I want to create a short 10 second video showcasing a feature to share social media and in the product (e.g. in-app release notes).

What is everyone using in 2021? :)

15 comments

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teetertater
I take a screen recording with the built-in MacOS tool, then convert it to a gif and post to twitter

iMovie for some quick cuts if necessary

ScottyFillups
Thanks for sharing! Yeah the MacOS workflow seems really smooth: I'm figuring out how to replicate that on Linux.
rahimnathwani
I use the following on Linux to create things like this: https://vimeo.com/641668961

- OBS Studio to record video

- Google Sheets to keep track of different segments of the video

- ffmpeg to split the original video into separate chunks (one per 'scene')

- openshot to arrange the scenes into the full video (speeding up some scenes and maybe slowing down others)

- (don't remember) for recording voiceovers

- sox for normalizing volume of voiceovers

- openshot for adding the voiceovers in the right spots (with the help of my Google Sheet) and background music

ScottyFillups
Thanks for sharing your workflow on Linux :)

Love the video. How long did it take to make?

rahimnathwani
Once I had the raw video footage (single unedited file), it took me something like 5 hours to create the final video. Some of that time was recording/re-recording the voiceovers, writing some spreadsheet formulas to create ffmpeg command lines for splitting the video file, finding background music, and learning to use openshot (I'd never used it before).

I think something similar would take me 1-2 hours today, and half that time would be rewatching the video to decide what to adjust.

f0e4c2f7
Recently I've been learning kdenlive to edit videos. I believe it uses ffmpeg on the backend. It's been great! The open source tooling around video recording and editing actually seems fairly good.
JSONderulo
Motion Array is pretty great for templates for showcasing an app or website. I've made a couple using those templates and Adobe After Effects.
shishy
Keynote if I need to do custom graphics with voice-overs

Otherwise just record with quicktime + audio

austinkhale
No affiliation with them whatsoever but I saw this on Twitter or HN a few weeks ago and have it bookmarked to trial: https://mockrocket.io/
dfeehrer
Thanks for the mention! Happy to answer any questions when you end up trying it
tmaly
If you want to screen record, I would highly recommend Camtasia. It does not cost that much and it excels at screen recording.

You can also use it for video editing. It takes 1-2 hours to learn.

If you want to shoot something outside the screen, most of the mobile phones work fine. You can get a tripod mount. Make sure to use a lapel mic to improve the sound.